Informix or Client SDK install: No Java virtual machine could be found

This is a something of a note to self. For some time it has been been the case that you may see this message when attempting an Informix server or Client SDK install if there is a problem starting the installer’s Java runtime environment:

# LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/lib64:/lib64 ./ids_install
Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...
No Java virtual machine could be found from your PATH
environment variable. You must install a VM prior to
running this program.

To add insult to injury when this condition occurs the installer exits with status code zero, suggesting all is ok.

Now the obvious thing to do seems to be to install a Java package, wondering whether OpenJDK will suffice or the official Oracle version is needed. This is never the answer! The Informix installer comes bundled with its own Java run time environment (JRE) which gets extracted into /tmp/install.dir.X and your challenge is in fact to find out why it isn’t working as it should.

You can see in my attempt at installing the product I have already prefaced the command with LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/lib64:/lib64. This is already a known way of fixing some installation problems. (For a 32-bit version you’d simply use /usr/lib:/lib.)

Everyone’s friend, strace, is a great way to start investigating this problem. In amongst the output I find this:

So why is this? I am logged in as root so I ought not be running into permission denied issues.

The core problem here is the way /tmp, which is a separate filesystem on my machine, is mounted. From the mount command output:

tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)

The key part here is the noexec flag which is a security feature preventing execution of binary files residing on this filesystem.

The best way to fix this is to set the environment variable IATEMPDIR to a directory on a filesystem where execution is allowed. I usually use /root for this purpose. And success:

# export IATEMPDIR=/root
# LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/lib64:/lib64 ./ids_install
Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...

Launching installer...

Preparing CONSOLE Mode Installation...

While the above should be sufficient I have seen the server installer still fail to work even with this environment variable set as some files may still be placed in /tmp. In this situation you can temporarily remove the security restriction with:

mount -o remount,rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,exec /tmp

and switch it back on again with:

mount -o remount,rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,noexec /tmp

I suggest before running the above you check the existing mount options for your /tmp filesystem.